


Days Go By

by amazinmango



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Also Alastair is kind of a douche, Episode: s03e16 No Rest for the Wicked, Hell, I'm Sorry Dean, Offscreen Happy Ending I Swear, Severe Dean whumpage ahoy :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 05:03:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazinmango/pseuds/amazinmango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are almost one-hundred forty-six thousand and ten days in forty years.</p><p>Dean can’t lose count.</p><p>He wants to.</p><p>But he can’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Days Go By

It’s been a long time since Dean’s seen his own bones.

He broke his arm, once, he was real little, he can’t remember--

Bright spring day, bright, too bright, hurts. His side hurts, his head hurts, and there’s noise and it hurts and it’s bad and he wants it to go away.

He’s screaming, it’s the noise, it hurts his head and his ears and his arm and it just keeps hurting like it’s getting worse and nothing makes it stop and he wants his Mom and he’s screaming and he yells for Mommy and it’s Daddy that is there, but he touches his arm and he can’t stop screaming even though it hurts more and more and make it go away--

He sees it, sees his arm, and his other hand hurts, it stings, and he feels like there’s road in it, and his arm looks wrong and it’s what _hurts_ and something’s poking him, it’s stuck in his skin but it’s broken on one end and it’s kind of yellow-white-clear and he’s bleeding and then it’s dark.

He can’t see. His arm...throbs. He’s not three. But he can hear Dad’s voice. Can hear something, but he can’t feel him.

_Oh god, oh god Dean, I, god I got you, I got you, Dean…_

Dad?

He can’t hear, he can’t feel, but he can feel something like he’s hearing it, it’s--

_Dean just sit still, I need you to be still for me, okay, I need you to--easy, son, Christ, easy, I’ve got you, sweetie I’m so sorry--_

His Dad never. He didn’t--he doesn’t--

His world flares white and he’s staring at the bone, the fucking radius sticking out of his fucking arm and it’s all pale and translucent where it’s broken and Dean’s _screaming_ but his voice is wrong and his arm is wrong, he’s three but he’s not, he’s not three, his Dad isn’t there, isn’t trying to calm him with a voice that’s shaking, and it sounds different, it’s not steady and flat and it’s softer, Dad, Daddy it hurts--

_Come on, kiddo, easy, I’m gonna pick you up, okay, we’re gonna get you all fixed up, you be strong for Daddy, okay? You don’t want to make Mommy sad, she doesn’t wanna see you cry, babe, I got you, I got you I got you_

He’s not here.

Dad’s gone.

The bike, the bike’s gone.

He loved that bike.

Dean opens his eyes. He can’t see. It’s too dark.

His arm hurts.

Dean looks down, and he can see his body, and it’s his body and he’s naked and it’s dark everywhere and nothing is up or down and he’s cold.

_Snap._

Dean’s head jerks to the right, if it’s the right, and down, if it’s down. His arm is hanging or lying and he can’t tell if he’s standing or prone and his body’s lit up and his arm--

It hurts, sharp and deep and _wrong_ the way it is with a really bad injury, the way you know in your stomach that it’s bad

_It’s just a broken bone, Dean, man the fuck up_

and he can see it, the radius punched through his skin, torn and bloody and it didn’t splinter like that when he was three, he healed fine, there was a knobby spot but

_Oh Dean I’m sorry I’m so sorry_

this is worse, there’s--there are splinters of it still stuck in his skin like it _burst_ when it came out of him, when it pushed out from the inside

_Wrap it or I’ll wrap it for you, they’re not gonna wait for you to sit on the goddamn bench_

and the skin’s torn ragged, there’s a fucking--it’s a vein or something, he can see his pulse, hear it like he feels it

_Dean it’s gonna be okay, Daddy’s got you, Daddy’s here and I’m gonna make it okay_

it’s not okay, Dean’s not okay, his Dad’s not here, it’s dark and it’s cold and his arm hurts

_Snap._

Dean’s head jerks to the left. His other--he’s never broken his left arm. Never, not once. The bone’s on the other side, underneath, and blood’s just pooling like it has nowhere to go so it kind of darkens under the skin of his arm really slow, and it’s warm and he’s cold and it’s the other one, the ulna, but he didn’t--

_Snap._

Dean tries to scream because ribs hurt when they’re bruised and cracked and when they’re broken they can kill you if they puncture a lung and maybe that’s why Dean can’t scream because he’s choking but even when that happens you don’t choke that much and he can’t cough because it hurts and then it hurts so bad, oh god it’s pain and Dean knows pain but it’s new and it’s like he’s three and he’s never had his bones broken before and he doesn’t know what’s going on and his Dad isn’t there and his Mom isn’t there and he’s by himself and scared and dark and cold

_Snap._

Dean looks down, if it’s down.

His leg. He’s never broken his leg. He’s broken toes and fingers and people have broken his nose and he broke his collarbone once and that hurt like a _bitch_ but that, down, his leg.

It’s a femur.

It’s his femur.

_Snap._

_Snap._

_Snap._

[Day One]

 

Dean hurts.

Dean shivers.

Dean yells and calls and screams and nobody answers and he can’t hear anybody and he’s alone.

Dean cries.

[Day Two]

 

There are times--Dean can’t really tell when or where, it’s always cold and dark and he wonders how he could have had a nightmare in a nightmare because his skin’s unbroken and he’s not naked but he doesn’t remember waking up or falling asleep--there are times when he hears things like he feels them.

He thinks he feels voices, but he can’t quite hear what they’re saying. He feels them, feels them like echoes, in his head maybe, somewhere in this black space.

He hasn’t heard his Dad in weeks.

[Day Twenty-Two]

 

They told him.

He remembers now.

They told him there’d be a line, a waiting list of black-eyed sons-of-bitches wanting a piece of Dean Winchester.

Dean knows where he is.

Dean knows where he is and there are demons he doesn’t even remember, but they all know him, they all make him remember, over and over and over.

 

Sometimes they smile, and they take their time. Sometimes they cut him and sometimes they bite him and sometimes they fuck him and always they kill him and always, always Dean wakes up and it’s a new Day and the line isn’t any shorter.

Sometimes he can fight, or he can try, and on the Days he’s merely beaten to death it’s almost a relief, except that he can’t die. Or at least he can’t stay dead. Other Days he’s feinted at, scratched until he’s bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts, and he gets tired and sluggish and the first time he slips and falls to his knees and realizes he’s not bleeding anymore because he’s _out of blood_ but he doesn’t die.

They hit him, they tear him, they even eat him while he screams and claws and kicks. They curse him and laugh at him and rail at him and hold him down while others take and dry sobs rack his throat because he can’t even yell for the pain anymore.

Other times are worse. It’s not just the physical--it’s the memories, the people in them ones he knows but their smiles are the tiniest bit off and it makes him think he’s dreaming and maybe he can wake up but in the end they have eyes that always, always turn black.

 

One Day, like any other, dawns cold and black and it’s not dawn, it’s just when Dean wakes even though he never sleeps. Everything is black, except when he’s in a memory, but he wakes standing floating lying and it’s the next Day.

The line’s gone.

Dean can feel them, hear the shuffling of their feet, taste their breathing.

He’s alone and they surround him, he feels them like he can hear them but he can’t see them.

For the first time that isn’t, because every Day is a new Day, he feels gravity.

He’s hanging, he’s upright, his arms are out to the sides. His weight is pulling at his wrists and his shoulders ache like he’s been hung up for--

For a long time. The skin on his wrists isn’t chafed yet but it’s raw and his neck hurts where his head just hangs bowed and his eyes are dry and there’s crust at the corners of his mouth, drool or blood or salt he doesn’t know.

He’s on a rack, and he’s been here forever, and his skin should be clean because it’s a new Day and he doesn’t remember--

“Hello, Dean,” he says, the voice Dean feels like it crawls over his bones and slides dirty fingers along his insides, and Dean retches, once.

He knows the voice. The voice is always the same, the speech pattern, the lisp, the nasal breath to it. Dean’s dirty and tired and hungry and nauseous and sweaty and cold and feverish and there’s crusted blood and excrement on the insides of his legs and he hurts all over, a bone-deep ache that’s deeper still, something inside and that’s what the voice wants.

“Hello,” the voice says again, a long pause between the word ‘hello’ and “Dean,” and Dean sees a face for the first time, a kind of gently twisted little grin, and Dean remembers the Day he relearned what it meant to be afraid.

[Day Sixty-Six]

 

Dean once read a stupid gory horror story that described intestines like fat snakes.

They’re not fat. They’re wet and slick and skinny and tangled until they spill and then they’re long, god they’re so long, and Alastair never really did too much with them, _cliche, I’m afraid,_ he’d say, with that horrible nasal voice.

Dean once held his own guts, he doesn’t remember what Day, but he did, and the--the large intestine, that’s like a fat snake, a weird ugly gross one that’s lumpy and hard where it’s full of shit, soft and weirdly too-compressible where it’s hollow and it hurt, it cramped where he held it because you’re not supposed to touch it and it was hot and it _moved_ in Dean’s hands. It was one of the Days that he didn’t have the throat to give voice to his horror.

It wasn’t even the gore that got to him, the image of his own insides on his hands while he was standing lying in the cold dark, it was that they moved and pushed and ached because he was still _alive._

[Day Seventy]

 

It doesn’t stop.

That’s the point of it. Dean maybe dies or falls asleep or passes out from pain or hunger or bloodloss and he wakes up, sometimes in a new Day and sometimes in the same one. He knows when it’s the same Day because he’s covered in shit and aching and he knows it’s a new Day when he wakes up in one piece and relatively clean. It’s those new Days that sometimes he wakes up crying, but he never remembers what he dreams about. He doesn’t think he sleeps. His throat, no matter how new his body is, is always raw.

 

Alastair shows Dean what it means to move beyond hurting somebody, beyond taking a piece out of their hide for your own satisfaction. Alastair shows Dean what it means to dismantle someone by taking pieces of them not for yourself, but to whittle them down, to open up the deepest parts of them and turn the mirror.

It’s not until the ninetieth Day that Dean sees his soul, and that’s the Day Alastair makes his first offer.

Dean doesn’t have a voice. He hasn’t spoken except to scream since...since his first ever Day, maybe. He’s yelled and hollered and whimpered and cried out, but he hasn’t formed a word in what feels like years.

Dean can only shake his head, sick to his stomach because he realizes that’s what it’s all about--this will never end, Alastair will never cease, and that the demon, if that’s what he is, has all the time in the world and Dean can only hang and hurt and not die.

[Day Ninety]

 

Dean doesn’t remember the first Day.

Alastair tells him about it, his Day Zero, and he tells a story like it’s the first time, like he wants nothing more than to make his listener _see_ and Dean’s heard it, he’s read it in Alastair’s voice, he’s felt it and he relives it when Alastair retells it but he doesn’t remember it happening. He doesn’t remember the thunder and the lightning and the hooks and the chains and the sick weightless pull, but Alastair tells him.

Dean does remember Lilith. He remembers the hellhound. He remembers dying, but after that it’s black and cold.

He thinks he remembers screaming for Sam.

[Day One Hundred]

 

Dean’s endured many things in his life, and almost none of them can compare to what Alastair puts him through now.

Alastair doesn’t do things to Dean; he makes Dean live experiences. He shows Dean what it means to be a vampire with dead man’s blood coursing through his veins; how it feels to be a shifter and have silver slid across your palm in the form of a blade. 

Alastair shows Dean other things. He shows Dean what it looks like to watch his mother burn from the eyes of a four-year-old, holding infant Sammy in his arms, standing right under her and smelling it, just like she said.

Dean vomits when Alastair’s lips move but Mom’s voice comes out, _I thought I’d left a pot roast burning in the oven…_

Dean never eats, so he has nothing to bring up, and Alastair makes his body eject itself. Dean’s almost grateful; the motion is repetitive and he chokes out pieces of himself but his throat burns into nothing so he has no throat to worry about and his torso just convulses on its own, hollowed out, and because he can’t smell anymore it’s not so bad.

[Day Three-Hundred Sixty-Three]

 

It’s dark and cold but Dean has something Alastair doesn’t. It’s inside him and Alastair cuts him and reaches into his body, sometimes wrist-deep and out the other side, yanks things and breaks things and pushes and twists and bruises but he can’t get it, can’t get what Dean has.

It’s hot and it’s bright and Dean’s never seen his soul from the inside before, only reflected with Alastair’s mirror. It burns and he can even see it blackening Alastair’s skin, but the bastard just presses and touches and smiles at him like he’s exactly where he wants to be.

Dean finds his voice, on the three-thousand six-hundred and fifty-second Day.

“Fuck you,” he says. It comes out bad, because his lips are in tatters and his tongue is missing a piece and so are his teeth and his mouth won’t stop bleeding and it hurts, but Dean swallows, gags, coughs, and says it again. “Ffuck _you.”_

Alastair laughs and laughs.

It’s a horrible sound.

[Year Ten]

 

Dean doesn’t lose his voice after that.

“Fuck you,” he says, every Day.

“Fuck you,” he says, when Alastair tells him he can get off the rack.

“Fuck you,” he says, and he says, and he says.

 

Once, Dean smiles at Alastair.

Dean’s always believed he’s less. Less of everything. Missing something, maybe just not having enough of something else. He’s simple, he’s not like Sam who has lots to work with.

Down here the ground’s a lot more level. The black-eyed bitches don’t have what Dean’s got, and Dean thinks that some twisted part of them, especially the ones that don’t feel so old, he thinks they envy him for it.

Dean starts to realize that it’s what Alastair is after, and Dean has always known that, but it’s still a revelation. Dean has something worth keeping, worth hiding, and he does, he shoves it deep inside himself and lets Alastair have his flesh and his blood and his bones, lets Alastair flay him again and again, run his nails softly down his exposed nerves and make his body sing because he can’t have the light that Dean keeps burning.

When Alastair’s done all he’s going to do to Dean’s body one Day, Dean just smiles at him, feels the pain and the fatigue and the burn inside that keeps Alastair from extinguishing him.

He smiles, bloody and broken and defiant.

Alastar smiles back, and something about it is different, an answer, and Dean’s smile dims.

“Dean,” Alastair says. “Dean, Dean, Dean.” He breathes, licks his lips, still smiling, always smiling. “You can’t hide it from me, Dean,” Alastair says. “I already have it right in front of me.”

[Day Nine Thousand One Hundred and Fifty]

 

The Day that Alastair takes a piece of Dean’s soul and holds it in his hand is the Day that Dean breaks.

It’s the Day Dean wishes he could forget.

It’s the Day it all comes true.

Worthless.

Useless.

Puppet.

Needy. Whiny. Petty. Earthly. Stupid.

That Day Alastair simply looked at him, and said, “Oh,” and then, “Well,” and then, “You’re ready.”

Dean was hurting, but he was always hurting. Even on new Days, now. When Alastair reached for him, he didn’t even flinch.

When Alastair took hold of the bone inside his arm without breaking the skin, Dean moaned, but it was a reflexive action.

When Alastair yanked and the bone snapped free, Dean heard his father’s voice, and when he looked at his arm it was whole, while Alastair held the piece of bone in his hand.

It started to glow.

It was dim.

Alastair squeezed, the bone cracked, the light splintered, and when Alastair crumbled it the light was extinguished.

Dean couldn’t breathe, his body too exhausted to shake, so he just stared, and he was so, so tired.

Alastair leaned in close, and whispered the same words he always whispered, and Dean didn’t say “fuck you” on that Day, the ten thousand, nine-hundred and fifty-seventh Day.

It’s the Day Dean got off the rack.

 

Dean’s cold and it’s dark but he can see.

His hands ache because he’s been clenching them.

His knuckles are raw.

His stomach’s sick.

His eyes are dry.

His head hurts and his chest is empty except it isn’t.

His head is sometimes on fire, on the inside, and there’s this swelling feeling of something else in the thick of him, low in the center, something dirty yellow and glowing, sometimes with black shit on it, he doesn’t know, it’s what he feels like he sees it, and it pulses when he squeezes, when he pulls, when he draws rusted metal so softly across unbroken skin and lets the light come out and he _understands_ now.

When they scream, it grows, the yellow sickness inside, or maybe it wasn’t sickness but it’s sick now, it’s gotten sick, and Dean’s disconnected from his body, but he feels his lips pulling back over his teeth and he knows he’s smiling.

[Year Thirty-One]

 

Some days Dean’s tired.

He’s tired of raising his hand to souls. He’s tired of the punishments he gets for shirking, of Alastair’s lazy slur when he calls him a slacker, and that’s almost nostalgic.

Alastair whispers in his ear, wet-sounding and dry as sandpaper at the same time.

The first time he did it--Years ago--Dean flinched and shook and there were tears rolling down his cheeks, already crusted with salt and dirt and blood.

Dean’s skin was always clean at the start of a new Day. His skin was in one piece, his orifices numbered as they should, his body was whole.

Now, each Day, he wakes to skin sticky and blotchy with dried offal, a scent he’ll never get out of his nose that’s like burnt air, ozone, Alastair’s voice in his ear amidst the roaring and wailing, telling him it’s the souls he’s tearing.

[Year Thirty-Two]

 

There are almost one-hundred forty-six thousand and ten days in forty years.

Dean can’t lose count.

He wants to.

But he can’t.

[Year Thirty-Nine]

 

Dean raises his hand, and he cuts souls.

Dean lowers his arms, and he aches inside.

Dean is tired, and Dean is sick, because Dean is glad.

It’s not him up there.

It’s not him on the rack.

[Year Thirty-Nine]

 

One Day, Dean feels a voice like he hears it.

He doesn’t understand the words, but he thinks he hears the call, and he raises his head.

 

On the One-Hundred Forty-Six Thousand and Tenth Day

Dean Winchester is saved.

[September Eighteenth, Two Thousand and Eight]

**Author's Note:**

> Holy beans, went to a bit of a dark place. Go read you some fluff after this, bloody hell, I should link to fluff just to redeem myself. SOMEBODY REC ME THEIR FAV DESTIEL FLUFF AND I SHALL POOT IT HERE POSTHASTE. DEANCASPIE GO!


End file.
